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Men,
have you become your father yet? ?
Women, have you
turned into your mother?
No matter how
much we love our parents, it is scary when that happens.?
None of us think that it will happen to us, but it does
happen to all of us sooner or later.
Some of us begin
to look like our parents.? First, we resemble our parents.?
Then we begin to look like our pets.? That??™s the way life
goes.
We begin to sound
like our parents.? We start saying all the same things to
our children that our parents said to us.? Things like,
???Someday, I hope you will have a child just like you,??? and
???As long as you live under my roof, you??™ll do as I say,??? and
???In my day, children respected their elders.???? All those
things that we swore that we would never say to our
children.? All those things that really pushed our buttons.?
Parents are good at pushing buttons.? After all, they are
the ones who installed them.? We say over and over again all
the things we heard over and over again. We can??™t help it.?
We are no longer ourselves.? We are our parents.
We go to school
reunions.? Reunions are wonderful. We visit with our
classmates.? We enjoy seeing them, but we can??™t help
thinking that we are spending time with the parents of our
classmates.? We are saddened to realize that some of our
classmates have become so old and grey that they barely
recognize us.
We once thought
that our parents were old coots.? Then we joined the old
coot fraternity.
We begin to say
things like, ???You call that music????
I must admit that
I feel the same way about hip-hop and rap that my parents
felt about the Rolling Stones.? I think that the ???c??? in rap
is silent.? My parents thought that the Stones should have
been silent.? My parents told me that they couldn??™t
understand the words to my music.? I don??™t want to
understand the words to some of the songs of today. Music
has become the dreaded 5/55--5 words repeated 55 times in
each song. It may be my loss, but I will be the first to
admit that I just don??™t understand today??™s music.? I didn??™t
really understand yesterday??™s music either.? I think that is
the way it is meant to be.? If parents liked the music of
their children, what would the young folks have to rebel
against?
We start liking
those odd combinations of food that our mother served us.?
My father wasn??™t fussy.? He could eat anything as long as it
was placed between a couple of slices of bread.? He did eat
some odd things--he put gravy on his apple pie.? Each family
has at least one weird food item that is relished by its
members--a recipe found in no cookbook.? A recipe that was
brought over from the old country by Grandma and probably
was the reason she had to leave the old country.? Something
like mustard and sugar sandwiches or putting ketchup on your
mashed potatoes or pepper on your vanilla ice cream.
We are frightened
when we realize that we agree politically with our parents.
We begin to
grumble about change and wonder out loud, ???What is wrong
with the kids today????? We sometimes get our halo on a little
too tight.? We have a tendency to judge others by their
actions while judging ourselves by our intentions.
We reminisce a
lot about the good old days that weren??™t so good while we
were living through them.? We begin to like old
things--cars, tractors, furniture, clothes, spouses, etc.
We pick up
pennies from the ground.? Sometimes a penny found is a penny
that earns us a trip to the chiropractor to remedy a sore
back.
We sometimes
become as frugal as our parents.? We spin apocryphal stories
of being so poor that we had no clothes.? We just put up
curtains and stayed indoors.? We tell how we baited our
mousetraps with IOU??™s.
We are heard to
exclaim that we can remember when a shopping mall used to be
nothing but farmland.
We understand why
Uncle Louie never wanted to stand in line.
We learn never to
lie about ourselves and to be very careful about telling the
truth about others.
Becoming our
parents isn??™t a bad thing.? In most cases it is probably a
good thing.? But it??™s always a scary thing.? ?
?©Al Batt 2004
Hartland, MN 56042
SnoEowl @ aol.com
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To read archived stories, click on this link:?
http://archives.zinester.com/9516/2004?
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Blessings to you today
Bob Johnston
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